Political Selection in the Skilled City

49 Pages Posted: 9 Jul 2014

Date Written: March 28, 2014

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of citizens’ human capital on the characteristics of elected politicians in democratic elections for the post of mayor. By using a change in the rules for Italian mayoral elections and a difference-in-differences estimator, I find that cities endowed with a larger amount of human capital tend to elect mayors that have a higher educational attainment and that were previously employed in skill-intensive jobs. This result is quantitatively small but robust to omitted variables or selection issues.

Keywords: human capital externalities, political selection, cities

JEL Classification: D7, I20, H8

Suggested Citation

Accetturo, Antonio, Political Selection in the Skilled City (March 28, 2014). Bank of Italy Temi di Discussione (Working Paper) No. 956, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2463209 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2463209

Antonio Accetturo (Contact Author)

Bank of Italy ( email )

Via Nazionale 91
Rome, 00184
Italy

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